title: Individual and community-level socioeconomic position and its association with adolescents experience of childhood sexual abuse: a multilevel analysis of six countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Childhood sexual abuse (CSA) is a substantial global health and human rights problem and consequently a growing concern in sub-Saharan Africa. We examined the association between individual and community-level socioeconomic status (SES) and the likelihood of reporting CSA.
  
  
  METHODS
  We applied multiple multilevel logistic regression analysis on Demographic and Health Survey data for 6,351 female adolescents between the ages of 15 and 18 years from six countries in sub-Saharan Africa, between 2006 and 2008.
  
  
  RESULTS
  About 70% of the reported cases of CSA were between 14 and 17 years. Zambia had the highest proportion of reported cases of CSA (5.8%). At the individual and community level, we found that there was no association between CSA and socioeconomic position. This study provides evidence that the likelihood of reporting CSA cut across all individual SES as well as all community socioeconomic strata.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We found no evidence of socioeconomic differentials in adolescents' experience of CSA, suggesting that adolescents from the six countries studied experienced CSA regardless of their individual- and community-level socioeconomic position. However, we found some evidence of geographical clustering, adolescents in the same community are subject to common contextual influences. Further studies are needed to explore possible effects of countries' political, social, economic, legal, and cultural impact on childhood sexual abuse.
authors.affiliation: Department of Public Health Sciences, Midsweden University, Sweden. Email: illyahaya@yahoo.com.
authors.forename: Ismail
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Yahaya
authors.forename: Antonio Ponce
authors.initials: AP
authors.lastname: de Leon
authors.forename: Olalekan A
authors.initials: OA
authors.lastname: Uthman
authors.forename: Joaquim
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Soares
authors.forename: Gloria
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Macassa
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D017954:Africa South of the Sahara / Q000453:epidemiology; D002648:Child; D002650:Child Abuse, Sexual / Q000517:prevention & control / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D003710:Demography; D005260:Female; D054624:Health Status Disparities; D006806:Human Rights; D006801:Humans; D016015:Logistic Models; D008297:Male; D055361:Multilevel Analysis; D012111:Residence Characteristics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D013029:Space-Time Clustering